I only realised this summer that I was going to die. I was stoned in the Turía park in Valencia, watching couples walk their dogs, kids play football, groups of hippies set up their chess sets. We’re all going to die! I realised, and I was alarmed. This wasn’t a moment of spiritual enlightenment but rather pure terror. One day I will not exist. One day none of us alive today will exist, not a single person. And this will definitely happen. It’s the only thing in life you can be certain of; you will die. But I don’t want to! I want this to last forever! I love being alive so so much. What struck me though, that day, is that I have zero coping mechanism for this. I’ve never spoken to anyone about death, I don’t know if anyone else feels unbelievably sad at how fleeting and impermanent all this is.
White Noise by Don DeLillo is about exactly this. When I first watched the movie, I deemed it the first hopeful story about capitalism I’d ever seen. I don’t think its about capitalism so much as consumerism but I still agree with myself. It makes me love supermarkets, fast food, shitty workout classes and erotic novels. But another theme of the book is fear of death. There is a beautiful moment where hair-brained Babs finally admits to her husband why she’s been taking black market pills and having sex with a strange man in a motel; “I’m afraid to die,” Greta Gerwig says in a small voice. When I first watched the movie and read the book, I kind of skipped over this motif. Okay, they’re both afraid to die whatever, let’s examine the role of television!! But now I’m realising there’s a reason why DeLillo included this in the novel. It’s a hopeful book about consumerism where the main characters are terrified to die.
Death was not something that was discussed when I was growing up, despite the fact that my life was surrounded by it. Death happens, the living grieve and then move on. I think this is probably most people’s experience who grew up in a western culture, we are notoriously bad at confronting our own mortality (it doesn’t really put you in the buying mood does it?).
Western society has created a neat little "grief box" where we place the grieving and wait for them to emerge fixed and whole again.
Michelle Steinke-Baumgard
The novel I’m writing is about death which means for the past six month I’ve been trying to educate myself about death. Has it led me to question why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Is there a god? If death is like before we were born does that mean we will be born again? Did I choose this life or was it completely random? Well yes. I don’t really have any answers (obviously) or even ways to think about it yet. Especially with my birthday coming up, I can’t stop thinking about how I’ll never be twenty one again (tragic, I loved being twenty one) but I’m also never going to be twelve again, I’m never going to be eighteen again. I only get to do everything once. Fuuuuuuuckkk.
Part of me wishes I could go back to before I had this realisation. But once you realise you’re going to die, it’s pretty hard to go back from that.
Here are some of the more beautiful artistic meditations on death that have left me in floods of tears! Enjoy!
Soul (2020)
I watched this with my little brother this week and it was such a good portrayal of how ill equipped for death those of us in the western world are. It also portrayed the flow state in such a beautiful way; I know this film was created by someone who really loves making art. I liked that one of the main realisations of the film was that your spark doesn’t mean your purpose. Just because you love something so much, it doesn’t mean it has to be your whole life. I often think about how my spark in life is writing but that I’d be very happy to work in a funky cafe or library for the rest of my life as long as I could still share little things like this with others.
Personal Shopper (2016)
IMBD classes this movie as a “psychological thriller” but I would describe it as “existential grief meets urban spaces in the age of technology and there’s ghosts”, there’s more things that fit this category than you might expect! Kristin Stewart is so fantastic in this (because she is a fantastic actor and anyone who disagrees can feel free to unsubscribe x) and the gloomy, rainy setting of Paris was so perfect. I like movies about ghosts that aren’t scary because truly the first step to accepting death is accepting ghosts. Not as this terrifying halloween caricature but just that there are some things we can’t understand and that doesn’t mean its evil. The final scene, with all its incompleteness, made cry like a baby.
Sixth Sense (1999)
I didn’t have such a strong reaction to a movie since I watched Gone Girl in January. Sometimes movies are just really, really good. I was particularly moved by the scene with the mother (Toni Collette) and Cole (Haley Joel Osment) where he finally tells her what’s been happening to him. Their entire relationship was just so beautiful. In the same vein as Personal Shopper, the movie makes you think that it’s going to be some sort of thriller/horror but then completely surprises you by being about our inability to cope with death.
I used to be one of those people who avoided anything to do with death at all costs. I wouldn’t read books where one of the characters dies, I always skipped That episode in Grey’s Anatomy and I generally tried to avoid talking about death with…everyone. But I’m starting to understand that confronting death makes life so much more precious. Since allowing death to be a part of my everyday life, I’ve found so much more joy in small things like talking on the phone with my parents or making someone a cup of tea or even just a walk through the park. I feel so lucky to be alive because I know its not going to last forever. We only have a little time with the people we love and I don’t want to ignore that fact anymore.
If you feel overwhelmed by all this, I totally get it. I’m still struggling with it, I still get flashes of terror where I wish I could un-know it. But watching those three movies really made me realise how beautiful life is and how death is not something to be feared but something to embrace. Let yourself cry at them, watch them with a loved one and hold each other at the end, hug it out. It doesn’t have to be terrifying, death can be a uniting force. None of us want to die and yet we are all going to, use this as a tool for empathy and gratitude.
Lots of love
Libs xx